On the evening of January 29, 2019, at the Gala event of AllerGen’s final Research Conference, eight exceptional members of the AllerGen network were recognized for their excellence as mentors, and four others were awarded grants to support the development of their mentoring skills.

Participating in the ceremonies were members of the Harkness family: Michelle’s husband Glenn and daughter Kasey, who also served on the committees that selected the winners for this, the inaugural presentation of the Michelle Harkness Mentorship Awards (MHMA).

The CIHR is funding a new, national microbiome research core, and two of its five platforms are headed by AllerGen investigators.

The University of Calgary-based initiative, The Integrated Microbiome Platforms for Advancing Causation Testing and Translation, or IMPACTT, brings together a “brain trust” of experts to offer core microbiome services, including research protocols and advice.

AllerGen investigators Drs Celia Greenwood (McGill University) and Fiona Brinkman (Simon Fraser University) are coleading, together with Dr. William Hsiao (The University of British Columbia), its “Computational” platform.

A five-year, $3M CIHR grant was awarded to Dr. Kathy McCoy (University of Calgary), the leader of IMPACTT, to set up the research core.

“This second round of CIHR funding will enable microbiome researchers to come together across universities in a national network, to offer their expertise and support to the next generation of Canadian microbiome researchers.”

Marking the culmination of 14 years of research, AllerGen held its ninth and final Research Conference from January 27-30, 2019, in Toronto, ON.

Over 220 delegates participated. Nearly half were AllerGen trainees, some of whom have been involved in the Network for over a decade. Many were Network investigators or committee members, many serving since AllerGen’s inception. Stakeholders and partners across sectors were present—and for the first time, among the speakers were children and families from all four CHILD Cohort Study sites across Canada.

The event showcased the many accomplishments and impacts of AllerGen’s partnered research investments. The program included six world-leading keynote speakers; nine discussion panels comprising 38 research presentations; 73 scientific posters and oral presentations by trainees; and a gala evening of awards and recognitions, including the presentation of the inaugural Michelle Harkness Mentorship Awards.

New research from AllerGen’s CHILD Cohort Study has found that babies sleep less at three months of age if their mothers do not have a university degree, experienced depression during pregnancy or had an emergency cesarean-section delivery.

“Sleep affects a baby’s growth, learning and emotional development, and is one of the most common concerns of new parents,” says AllerGen investigator Dr. Piush Mandhane (University of Alberta), one of the study’s lead authors and site leader for the Edmonton site of CHILD.

“While earlier research has linked a mother’s socioeconomic status, including level of education, to shorter infant sleep duration, we have not really understood the factors at play. Our study revealed that 30% of the effect of maternal education on infant sleep duration is actually mediated by a mother’s prenatal depression, as well as the type of delivery.”

There are several possible explanations for the association between maternal depression and infant sleep: “Mothers in distress tend to have sleep problems during pregnancy, which can be ‘transmitted’ to the fetus via the mother’s circadian clock and melatonin levels,” observes AllerGen investigator and co-lead author Dr. Anita Kozyrskyj (University of Alberta).

“Maternal depression and emergency cesarean section also both lead to elevated free cortisol levels, which, in turn, may cause an exaggerated stress response in infants that negatively impacts their sleep.”

“Our study suggests that prenatal depression and birth mode are potential targets for healthcare professionals and policy makers to improve infant sleep duration,” adds first author Brittany Matenchuk, an AllerGen trainee. “Mothers who experience prenatal depression or an emergency cesarean delivery may benefit from support so that infant sleep problems do not persist into childhood.”

The study, published in Sleep Medicine, analyzed data from 619 infants and their mothers participating in the CHILD Cohort Study.

Oral immunotherapy (OIT) is a relatively new approach to treating food allergies that exposes allergic patients to gradually increased doses of an allergenic food to desensitize their immune systems. While OIT can be safely used to treat the majority of children with cow’s milk allergy, a new Canadian study has found that allergic reactions frequently occur during treatment, and that almost 16% of these reactions can be classified as anaphylactic.

The study, published in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice, followed 41 children undergoing milk OIT at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and found that the mean number of anaphylactic allergic reactions per patient was 6 and roughly one-quarter of children withdrew from treatment due to either recurrent reactions or persistent gastrointestinal symptoms.

“The risk of anaphylactic reactions is one of the main limitations for the routine use of OIT,” says the study’s lead researcher, AllerGen investigator Dr. Moshe Ben-Shoshan.

“Based on our results, we recommend vigilant monitoring of all patients for both non-anaphylactic and anaphylactic reactions, particularly during the escalation phase of OIT treatment.”

The study also identified possible factors associated with a higher risk of anaphylaxis. “We found that children with well-controlled eczema were less likely to react severely during OIT. Children who had an allergy specific to particular milk proteins (casein or alpha-lactalbumin) seemed to be at higher risk,” noted the paper’s first author, AllerGen HQP Dr. Sarah De Schryver.

His project aims to determine how often these adverse reactions—typically seen in the form of skin rashes—are allergic rather than non-allergic, and to develop a simple evaluation approach to help diagnose “true” allergies to antibiotics.

“Currently, there is no accepted method to diagnose allergic versus non-allergic antibiotic reactions,” says Dr. Ben-Shoshan. “As a result, children may be misdiagnosed as allergic, and then avoid the antibiotic involved into adulthood, replacing it with antibiotics that may be less effective, more toxic, and more expensive.”

His team began collecting data from children with suspected antibiotic allergy in 2012, conducting supervised oral challenges on them in his clinic, and following those tolerant of the antibiotic for five years to see if their tolerance was sustained.

With the current CIHR support, his team will now “expand our registry to evaluate the major antibiotics used to treat infections, and identify factors associated with positive challenges. Our study will provide valuable data on the safe use of antibiotics in children and the strategies to diagnose and predict allergic reactions.”

Dr. Ben-Shoshan published in JAMA Pediatrics on the misdiagnosis of antibiotic allergies in 2016, when he found a commonly used skin test ineffective for diagnosing suspected allergy to amoxicillin. That study contributed to a paradigm shift in the approach to the diagnosis of antibiotic allergy and was named one of the top 10 Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine stories for 2016 by NEJM Journal Watch. Its findings were covered by the CBC and others.

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It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of an AllerGen supporter and friend, Mr. Donald Green, on Monday, February 18, 2019.

Mr. Green was a member of AllerGen’s Board of Directors and Chair of its Budget and Audit Committee, positions he had held since 2014.

“Don’s leadership within AllerGen was grounded in great wisdom and a depth and breadth of real-world experience,” says AllerGen’s Managing Director, Dr. Diana Royce.

“Though a busy and very accomplished person, he was generous with his time, and his warm, level-headed presence will be sorely missed. On behalf of the entire network, I extend my sincere condolences to his family, friends and colleagues for their loss.”

At the time of his passing, Mr. Green was also serving as President and CEO of the private investment company Greenfleet Ltd. and President and Chairman of E-celebrate Corp.

Through his career, he had held executive or governance roles in many other enterprises, including Aviva Canada Inc., AudienceView Software Corporation, Medical Diagnostic Exchange Corp., DXStorm.com Inc., the National Bank of Canada, International Bioanalogics Systems Inc., Laidlaw International Inc., the Ontario Research Foundation, McMaster University, and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Green began, however, in the family firm, Hamilton Clamp Company, which he transformed into the global auto parts powerhouse Tridon Ltd. Under his leadership, Tridon developed several world-firsts including the first non-metallic wiper blade and the first electronic signal flasher.

Parallel to his success in the business world, Mr. Green also excelled on the water: He sailed around the world at the age of 18 and wrote a book about the adventure. In 1978, he skippered his racing yacht “Evergreen” to victory in the Canada’s Cup and in 1979 survived the deadly Fastnet Storm that took the lives of 17 sailors off England.

In 1980, Mr. Green was awarded the Order of Canada, the highest civilian honour bestowed on Canadians. He received the Ryerson University Alumni Achievement Award in 1998, the Honorary Member OACETT “CET” designation in 1996, and the Administrative Manager of the Year Award, presented by the Institute of Certified Administrative Managers of Ontario in 1986. He was inducted into the Burlington Sport Hall of Fame in 2012, the Royal Hamilton Yacht Club Hall of Fame in 2015, and the Canadian Sailing Hall of Fame in 2018. Mr. Green held an Engineering degree from Ryerson Polytechnic University, along with Business Administration certifications from the University of Western Ontario and McMaster University.

New research from the CHILD Cohort Study sheds some light on the importance of the infant’s mouth as a source of breastmilk bacteria.

The idea that breastmilk has a microbiome—a community of bacteria living within it—is relatively new and has sparked debate about where breastmilk bacteria come from.

The new research, published February 13, 2019, in Cell Host & Microbe, found that among the many factors examined, the method of breastfeeding—whether mothers fed their infants directly at the breast or fed them pumped breastmilk from a bottle—was most consistently associated with the composition of the milk microbiome.

Direct breastfeeding was associated with microbes typically found in the mouth, a greater abundance of the beneficial Bifidobacteria, and higher overall bacterial richness and diversity.

“We found that milk bacteria are different in mothers who pump their milk,” says CHILD investigator Dr. Meghan Azad (University of Manitoba), who led the study. “We suspect that pumping may prevent the transfer of oral bacteria from the infant to the mother and might introduce other bacteria from the pump.”

The researchers used data from nearly 400 infants and their mothers participating in the CHILD Cohort Study.

In a knowledge translation video prepared for AllerGen’s HQP Video Competition, AllerGen trainees Laura Feldman and Natasha Gray, in collaboration with their colleague Dresden Glockler-Lauf, provide an introduction to public health surveillance and describe how it is being used by the Ontario Asthma Surveillance Information System (OASIS) to monitor asthma in the province of Ontario.

The video also lists constructive uses to which health surveillance data can be put; for example, to facilitate the evaluation of treatment programs, the calculation of economic burden of disease, and the generation of research questions.

The three-minute video uses simple language and stop-motion animation with playful props to convey its information in a manner accessible to a lay audience.

The creators are based at The Hospital for Sick Children and supervised by AllerGen investigator Dr. Teresa To.

A study led by AllerGen investigator Dr. Anita Kozyrskyj and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) in September 2018, is the journal’s top article for 2018 in terms of media coverage.

The study used data from CHILD Study participants and found that frequent use of household disinfectants—primarily cleaners—may increase the risk of obesity in young children.

According to CMAJ, the article, “Postnatal exposure to household disinfectants, infant gut microbiota and subsequent risk of overweight in children,” received over 700 hits in Canadian, US and international media. Its Altmetric score of 1,226 is the highest among all CMAJ articles in 2018, and is in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric.